During the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in early November, health services researcher Judith Katzburg urged doctors to “push the agenda” securing gun control for public health.

Describing her efforts in the panel, Kartzburg said, “We are hoping to forge a national coalition of partners to push the agenda of a public health approach to gun violence prevention forward.”

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence president Dan Gross echoed Kartzburg’s sentiment and spoke of how his group values the opportunity to partner with doctors in this gun control push. Gross said:

Cross-sector partnerships are incredibly important to us, especially partnerships in the health and public health area. Because gun violence, at the end of the day, has been looked at too long through a political lens. It’s a public health issue, and it’s one of the most pressing public health issues facing our country today.

Gross went on to make clear that success in securing gun control depends on success in framing it an “issue of public health and safety.”

It is important to note the not-so-subtle shift from pushing gun control–under the label, gun control–to pushing gun control under the label, public health or public safety. The Brady Campaign’s anti-gun goals are still anti-gun, but they are wrapped in new words and given a different delivery methodology via the help of medical personnel who support more gun control as well.

If these gun control proponents could ever secure a federal agency to take up gun control for public health, they could then use that agency to implement new gun regulations unilaterally–without the hindrances of Congress–much as the environmentalists have been able to do with the EPA.